Clean coal a furphy, says Dr Karl

By Paul Bibby

THE CELEBRITY scientist and Climate Change Coalition candidate for the Senate, Karl Kruszelnicki, has described clean coal as a "complete furphy", likening it to Nazi propaganda.

The colourful campaign of the physicist-turned-politician took a serious turn when he slammed Labor and the Coalition for propagating the "myth of carbon capture" and wasting taxpayers' money.

"Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist, said if you're going to tell a lie, tell a big one, and this is a beauty," Dr Kruszelnicki said. "It is a furphy, a pork pie to cover up the fact that there is no such thing as clean coal," he said at Customs House in Sydney.

Dr Kruszelnicki, who is standing on the Climate Change Coalition NSW ticket behind the organic farmer and author Patrice Newell, used a scale model of Sydney and a $10 tent to demonstrate the impossibility of storing the carbon dioxide produced by coal-fired power stations.

Sydney alone would produce a cubic kilometre of compressed carbon dioxide every day as a result of the process, he said.

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"You can't build a box big enough to store that every day - there is nowhere big enough underground to put it and the ocean is not an option.

"One cubic kilometre of CO

Dr Kruszelnicki was joined by fellow Climate Change Coalition candidates who are seeking positions in the Senate and House of Representative seats across the country, including the marginal Sydney electorates of Wentworth and Bennelong. The group is calling for a 40 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, based on 1990 levels, and a 70 per cent reduction by 2050.

Ms Newell said that thermal, wind and solar energy could provide 100 per cent of Australia's electricity needs."I know that for a fact that coal workers in the Hunter Valley would be quite happy to have a job in the renewable industry," Ms Newell said.